Sean Thomas is a novelist, journalist and travel writer. He also publishes thrillers under the name Tom Knox. He is currently writing a memoir of his extremely misspent youth, and similarly misspent adulthood, and tweets under the name @thomasknox.

How I should have died just before lunch today

Many years ago, when I was living in Bangkok with a friend (in a hotel that did heroin on room service) we went to visit a Chinese fortune teller in the great Wat Po temple. We did it for the laughs. We were 22. We were drunk. We lived in a hotel that offered China white heroin for breakfast. Why the hell not?

However our – or rather my – ironic detachment from the whole fortune telling lark went awry when the wizened Chinese clairvoyant told me a few things that were uncannily accurate. And then he said, or heftily implied, that I was going to die when I was 49.

Of course I chortled and dismissed the notion. I didn’t, and don’t, believe in fortune tellers. But ever since then, his words have faintly nagged me. What if he was right? He got other things right. What if 49 is the age at which the Almighty will send me a GrimReaperGram?

And now I am 49. I have been 49 for eleven months. I’ve tried hard not to tempt fate in these months. Death, like the lynx, only takes live prey – so I’ve kept pretty still, hoping Death, the predator, won’t notice my movements. So far it has worked; I’m still here.

Trouble is, my job title is, in part, travel writer. And sometimes in travel writing you have to do apparently dangerous things. And that is how I found myself in a car, this morning, heading up the Brenta Dolomites, where I was going to jump off a summit in the mountain sun, attached to Luca Donini, the world champion paraglider.

Clearly, in doing this, I wouldn’t just be tempting Fate, I would be taunting Fate, I would be singeing Fate’s beard, I would be sticking a pineapple up Fate’s leatherette miniskirt and giving it a provocative twist.

The car ascended the mountains. I felt like a soldier being trucked to the Front. My senses were sharpened by the nearness of doom, or perhaps that was all the encouraging grappa I had in the rifugio.

The sensation of plunging, yet floating, was simultaneously horrifying – and amazing. At one point I felt so serene I was able to record a video. It’s up there. I even live tweeted it. Seconds after this I was gripping the cables of the 'chute in proper fear, as we hit turbulence. I closed my eyes and basically prayed.

We landed ten minutes later. I punched the air in glee, then felt somewhat sheepish. Because I’m not there yet. There’s still a month to go: oo-er. On the other hand I’ve realised there is an upside to all this foolishness. I am probably the only person alive who is really looking forward to his 50th birthday.